“Seed, At Random” by Rebecca Beauchamp

Then the heavy cock wields,
rises, spits seed
at random and the man
shrieks, homeless
and perfected in the empty dark.
His god is a thrust of infinite desire
beyond the tame musk
of companionable holes.—Robert Hass, “In Weather”

He came on my face and I wrote a poem about it!
This is what women do. No—more importantly, this is what
they write about. Lord bless the heavy load unheaved,
then the load bursting like language or fat. The earth
releases its precious lubricants like spittle. God
the puppeteer behind all of it, thick string
beefed & hanging like a key at the center of my throat.
Then again I overeat when I regret things and I overeat
when I don’t. Explain that, mon créateur.
Or should I say ma? Ma, mama, mother, mom.
In the Neutrogena commercial a goddess rubs lotion
all over her awful snakeskin and makes it perfect.
Something’s up in the garden that spits you out looking bad.
There’s a hand at the center of every poem: the poem
is you, the hand’s a fist. I’m a sucker for romance.

Rebecca Beauchamp is a multidisciplinary artist in the University of Virginia’s program in poetry writing. She is the recipient of the Wagenheim literary award and the University of Virginia’s 2015 Award for projects in the arts. Her work can be found or are forthcoming in 491, Queen Mobs’ Tea House, and Virginia Literary Review, among others. Her first chapbook, Necessity of Foreplay, was released electronically through Glass Press of the Future.